Happily Ever After was a damn lie. No one rides off into the sunset. The days are not all rosy and loving and no one is spending hours every day lying in bed telling each other how wonderful the other is. It’s just not the reality of marriage.

The reality is this:

Half (50%) of Americans get divorced.

Statistically, it’s probably accurate to assume that ALL married people find marriage challenging and MOST married people are sometimes unhappy in their marriage and EVERY married person sometimes does something imperfect.

In fact, the state of marriage is in such trouble that the federal government is now trying to help people stay married by providing marriage education courses free of charge regardless of income. You know if anti-welfare George W. Bush is providing free social services to try to help people avoid divorce - marriage is having some serious problems.

 All the romantic movies and fairy tales and expectations were simply a load of crap. 

Marriage is this: very hard work.

If you consider staying miserably married a failure in itself, and I do, then way more than the majority of us are failing at it.

Jon & Kate’s marriage is a resounding success (statistically they’ve beaten the average divorce rate of multiples parents, which is two or three times higher than for parents of single children) and it’s a shame that anyone’s marriage would be so highly criticized. Holding on to our absurd fairy-tale ideals about what marriage should be like isn’t going to help anyone’s marriage.

Pretending that marriage is as easy as happily ever after never helps anyone’s children grow up to be good at the difficult job of being a spouse. It is better that their 8 children are exposed to the reality of the hard work, conflict and conflict-resolution that goes into a marriage, so they will have a clearer understanding of marriage before they do it expecting happily ever after.

What criticism of their marriage does is dismiss all the hard work and trial and error that a successful marriage, like Jon & Kate’s, involves.

You know what I think? I think if you’re critical of other people’s marriage – well, you’re probably critical of your own spouse. And criticism is a sure marriage killer.

Post from: Blisstree

J&K+8 = Marriage Reality